"At The Mountains Of Madness"It's been quite a while since I last wrote a review on this site. School work and such have been keeping me busy, and I haven't read too many books lately that I'm actually interested. So, without further ado, I will announce the novel I shall review from my past which you already guessed thanks to the title, At The Mountains Of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft, written in 1931. Let us begin.
The book stars Geologist William Dyer, who is stationed at the Antartica with a team of scholars. They find ruins beyond a dangerous path beyond a huge mountain range. The ruins are very odd. Dyer and some of the other members of the team on the excavation find 14 life forms that they are unable to identify. The life forms are preserved in ice, presumably dead, with 6 of them badly damaged, yet in very good condition. The whole place seems other wordly, because of apparent age of the ruins is far too great for any civilization to have build it, so Dyer and the others presume it to be a extra-terrestrial place. They come to the conclusion that the ruins havent evolved naturally and the highly evolved things they see there are unexplainable. When they finally return to their camp after being unable to contact it, they find everyone dead, except one dog and one team member.
The book has a terrific atmosphere, filling the reader with dread and terror as Dyer delves deeper in to this mystery. The character development of Dyer is an interesting one and his struggles with the things he sees, an interesting one. Dyer writes a diary in the story, which you yourself read as he writes it. The mythos is very defined, interesting and highly original, which keeps the reader interested while Dyer analyzes the ruins deeper and encounters the creatures dwell within. The writing style is very interesting, as the writing style increases the amount of feelings conveyed by the text over the book, all that dread, that fear, that hopelesness, perfectly transferred to the reader. All of the characters are well detailed, all with their own personal character traits, flaws and interests that are all well developed and explained during the book.
I'm not making this one too long since I could go on for hours, so I'll just wrap this up. The book is extremely fun to read, it's not too long and the language isn't too difficult, so it shouldn't pose any problem to read. Even though, it was written in 1931, it's still better than most sci-fi even in these days. May not be the most popular book ever, but it's still one of the best, which shows that not everything popular is always good (this logic works on 90% of all top 10 books read list).
That is all.... Good evening, and, stay away from weird ruins and this spot = 47° 9′ 0″ S, 126° 43′ 0″ W. The trip might end up badly for you.
